


Life's Little Instances

by SouthernBird



Series: XZero Week [2]
Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman Zero | Mega Man Zero, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, It Spirals Quickly After That, M/M, X Adopts a Cat, XZero Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-10-31 22:43:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17858393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernBird/pseuds/SouthernBird
Summary: “… Why do you have a feline unit in our apartment?”





	Life's Little Instances

**Author's Note:**

> My poor friend Larytello offered penguins when I asked for help with this prompt. 
> 
> Poor thing will be sorely disappointed in me.

“… Why do you have a feline unit in our apartment?”

 

Days come and go with the rise and fall of life’s little instances, and this one is no different. Comrades fade in and out, whether by promotions or retirement, battles are fought and won and redone all over, and ‘hellos,’ ‘goodbyes,’ and ‘good lucks’ are passed in the spaces of all around even when he cannot hear them.

 

Yet, the only true constant in Zero’s life has always been blue, lustrous, kind blue, and how that blue continues to surprise him during the times he feels listless and existential.

 

Zero, in spite of his specifications that align more with, as Douglas has jokingly remarked, ‘bad ass war machine hellbent on decimating the world with a toothpick,’ has never truly allowed more introspection on his own self outside of ‘monster’ and ‘war mongerer.’ The sharp copper tinge of battle is as known to him as the vision of his own face whenever the smooth steel of the elevator doors of the Base close on him, though he has dealt with a hefty argument each time he has ever brought it up. The steadfast grip of his hand around his weapon makes his core feel more at ease at times than taking an offered E-tank in the canteen, but fingers intertwined in his own feel somehow grander than any hilt. He is a war bot, but blues flow through him like rivers towards the sea, and now he is reaping the benefits of calmness that he refuses to acknowledge.

 

This time, though, brings forth a wonderment of the situation, finding X kneeling in their shared apartment just a block down from Base with a box, a blanket, and a little gray ball of fur that proclaims itself with soft cries and tender purrs.

 

A pout— Zero nearly curses out loud— where X’s bottom lip just barely puckers out while his shoulders slump, and any defense the red war bot could gather in his gears and his fortitude get thrown out into the cityscape twenty floors above street level. “I found her outside; she was freezing and I couldn’t find her mother or any of her litter and—.”

 

Zero raises a hand, guides himself further in from the threshold of their entrance door to kneel down to one knee guard beside his partner. The motion is enough to cease any ramblings X would find to further remark upon during his ventures outside after their normal routine hours so it is a small victory in another small battle in their relationship. However, logic proceeds from silence, blooming a timid petal as the blond plainly blunts forth, “there are four animal shelters with a three mile radius of our location.”

 

“And?!” X scoffs, turning his gaze that Zero misses sorely whenever it no longer lingers upon him to pet along the back of a kitten that is barely seven weeks old perhaps, “she was just sitting there in the alley near the building. She deserves a chance at a home, too, and _you_ said once we got settled in…”

 

Settled in. It does not take much to access the memory bank that retains the file of X’s accusationto recall that yes, Zero _did_ allow X the hope of acquiring a ‘pet’ of some kind once their scant belongings filled their new abode properly and a routine was precisely noted in their databases. However, it had never come up in conversation again, and the war machine never ponders on the thoughts outside of proximity as X does constantly.

 

Still, the cat peers up from her box with eyes so depthlessly sapphire in color that even Zero has to perk up at her gaze. It strangely reminds him of his own, honed in on a target while assessing their level of threat to his person or to those around him. She captures him with swirling irises until she is quite done with that, her teeth showing as she yawns quietly.

 

X makes a sound that Zero parallels to a mourning dove’s soft morning coo, and his resistance falters, then shatters, and this abrupt new addition is theirs, rubbing her cheek against Zero’s fingers when X takes his hand to properly meet her. Whiskers prick at a white glove, setting off pins of a sensor signals, and it turns out that he and this kitten are more alike than not, their bodies created to understand survival.

 

It’s comforting.

 

“She let me give her a bath! Did you know that cats are usually adverse to water? She never fought me once, Z…” and Zero loses himself in the delicate sting of life, wondering why he must become attached to something that requires him to love when the emotion itself feels hollow as it rings somber in those darker nooks of his chest.

 

 

 

 

_And X named their cat Leviathan, some funny joke about her eyes being as vastly blue like the sea and her aptitude for being quite the beast that Zero forgets after all the decades he abuses his mind and his body in the threadbare hope that X’s dreams of peace would come to fruition. A world without war, a life with peace where X could hold his lover’s hand without question shatters when bubbles rumble through the waters he finds himself swimming in herald the entrance of a girl with eyes so painfully familiar his heart hurts to think about what all he has missed and why she feels like a piece of a home he walked away from._

 

_“My name is Leviathan, one of the Guardians of Master X.”_


End file.
